Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan secret service officer who was convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, died on Sunday, according to the Washington Post. In 2009, al-Megrahi's release from the Scottish prison where he was being held for his crimes created a backlash from those affected by the crash; however, the law in Scotland allows terminally ill prisoners to return home for their final days.

Mr. Megrahi was serving a life sentence in a Scottish prison in 2008 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. In August 2009, he was released under a Scottish law that allows terminally ill prisoners to die at home. When he was freed, Mr. Megrahi was expected to live three months.

That Mr. Megrahi died in his native country — and not in a Scottish prison cell — was a shocking end to the life of a man considered a terrorist by the U.S. government and whom the FBI once named to its “most wanted” list.

During the late 1980s, Mr. Megrahi technically was serving as chief of security for the state-owned Libyan Arab Airlines. In reality, however, the job was his cover as a clandestine officer in the Jamahiriya Security Organization, Libya's intelligence branch.